The Next 700 Distributed Object Systems

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, the basic building blocks for distributed object systems have emerged: distributed objects, communicating with Remote Message Send (RMS), also known as Remote Method Invocation (RMI) or Location-Independent Invocation (LII). However, it has also become clear that such abstractions are by themselves sufficient to expose the hard problems of distributed computing, but not to solve them.

At last year's ECOOP workshop on Distributed Objects Programming
Paradigms, we identified some of these problems (Security, Application Services, Other Communication Protocols, Tolerance of Partial Failures, Run-time Evolution, Meta-Object protocols and Ordering of events) that this year we will focus on.

The goal is to define and refine abstractions that address some of these problems and other like them. What are the right APIs, development methods, reasoning systems, and tools for building the next generation of Distributed Object Systems?

Call For Papers

At last year's ECOOP workshop on Distributed Objects Programming
Paradigms, we identified some of these problems. This year we will focus on:

Security
- Authentication, authorization, privacy
- Protection from malicious hackers
- What can run where?
Application Services
- Mobility
- Migration
- Persistence
Other Communication Protocols (beyond RMS)
- Publish & Subscribe
- Data-centric computing, e.g., real-rate flows
- Group-oriented communication
Tolerance of Partial Failures
- Transactions
- Alternatives to transactions
Run-time Evolution
- of classes and interfaces
- of persistent data
Meta-Object protocols, e.g., changing the meaning of message send
Ordering of events

This workshop aims to foster discussion during the workshop and to avoid a mini-conference. Sessions of discussions and presentations will be grouped according to a list of selected issues raised by the position papers.

Position papers, not to exceed 6 pages in length , are solicited by 17th April 2001. Papers based on experience with the above issues are particularly welcome.

Submission to : eric@diku.dk